1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to floating intake ports for extracting liquid from containers, and more specifically to a floating inlet tube with an opening that avoids extracting sediment from the bottom of the container.
2. Description of Related Art
When extracting a liquid from a container, it is typical to provide a pickup tube that remains below the surface of the liquid so that air or other gas above the liquid surface does not enter the liquid that is being extracted.
One previous device addresses this problem by teaching a nursing bottle having a nipple, a bottle portion, and a flexible dip tube adapted with a float near the drawing aperture thereof. The drawing aperture of the dip tube is thus always maintained slightly below the liquid surface so that liquid is always drawn from around the surface of the liquid. While the bottle is full, the aperture points upward (but below the liquid surface); however, when the bottle has very little liquid left in it, it does not support the float and the drawing aperture is positioned downward because of attached weighting means, thereby becoming more likely to pick up any sediments that exist on the bottom of the bottle.
When brewing a yeast-containing beverage, such as beers and ales, it is common to produce sediments that typically eventually settle on the bottom of a container in which the beverage is stored for use. While the sediments are often strained/filtered, smaller particles often remain and are consumed either from the storage bottle itself, or if obtained from a bulk container, fed into a consumer's glass. Accordingly, it is desirable to minimize the amount of sediments passed into a beverage drinker's glass from the storage container.
Many beverages are commonly stored in soda kegs, which are vessels that are pressurized to transfer the beverage through a pickup tube and/or to carbonate the beverage. However, because soda kegs are typically utilized for non-yeast-containing beverages, the pickup tube is fixed with its opening near the bottom of the soda keg since there are no concerns about sediments being extracted with the beverage.
Therefore, it is readily apparent that in order to utilize a soda keg for containment of a yeast-containing beverage, there is a need for a pickup tube with an aperture directed away from any sediment when the pickup tube is near the bottom of the container.